or… Tales of a 30 year old Nothing.

THE RUSSIAN CLOWN: CHAPTER 22

The next day. The 101 Freeway. The Highland exit. My mom drives over a bump in the road and says, “There. That bump. That’s when you turned into a little ball. She drives a bit farther, narrating her tale for me. “So I came down here and I couldn’t find anything, I mean, where do they expect you to pull off?” and I scan the horizon, trying to find the trees that I saw. She points at a bus stop and says, “There. That’s where I parked.” I look across the street and see the small grove running parallel with the Hollywood Bowl.

“So crazy,” I say and my mom says, “I know.” She is talking about the seizure while I’m staring at a man standing on the corner condemning people to hell dressed in an Elmo costume.

We end up deep in the heart of Hollywood, a maze of busy streets and traffic lights to which no freeway leads. Like David Bowie’s labyrinth, there are no true shortcuts.

We pull up outside of an unmarked brick building and make our way to the second floor. Inside, everything is from the ’70s—the wallpaper, the art, the doorknobs—but not in that good way that is intentional. I enter a small office clad with crusty shag carpet and worn wool couches. “I have an appointment,” I say to the young receptionist. She asks me to sign in and have a seat. I pick up a copy of Lava Lamp Monthly and flip through the pages. Two other patients, both young males, are seated with me, both of their eyes so red it looks as if they’ve just left their mothers’ funerals.

Both try to casually eyeball me, a twenty-six-year-old bookended by his mother and wife. They glance at me out of the corners of their rose-colored eyes and must think I’m a complete mess, a ghost in clothes, a dead man walking. A heavy oak door opens and someone calls the first boy’s name from the revealed darkness. He enters and disappears into shadows, the door slowly swinging closed on its own accord and then ominously clicking shut behind him. I turn back to my magazine and read about the history of lava lamps. Invented by Edward Craven Walker in 1948, began mass production in 1963, originally named the Astro Globe. A few minutes later, the boy exits, staring at a small card. He pockets it and leaves. The second boy’s name is called and it’s second verse, same as the first. I have just enough time to read about how the largest lava lamp in the world is 4 feet tall and contains 10 gallons of super-secret-lava-formula before the door opens and the second boy exits. I watch him leave and am just amazed at the speed and efficiency of this doctor’s office, which, seeing how quickly everything is progressing, really shouldn’t be allowed to call these four walls a waiting room.

My name is called—Brukbag—and I tell my posse to stand down cuz I’m goin’ alone into the shadows. I find what happens next to be so absurd that it borders on satire.

I enter an ominously dark office, lit only by the slightly cracked blinds. An oddly shaped silhouette sits behind the desk and a scruff voice says, “Cum een, cum een.” I take this as Come in and close the door softly behind me. The figure signals for me, with a bony hand, to sit, and as I do, my eyes adjust and I see what can only be described as a Russian clown impersonating a doctor.

This woman has chunky blonde hair that’s been pulled into two ponytails, each spitting off either side of her head. She wears wire-rimmed glasses that magnify her eyes into enormous green watermelons and her make-up looks as though a blind person with Parkinson’s applied it. The lipstick smears off the lips and into that unnamed area between mouth and nose, smudging and smearing in large circles a red color so intense that it’s nearly neon pink. Her cheeks are flushed with blush, making her look chronically embarrassed. Emerald green circles surround her eyes the color of, well, emeralds, the glasses magnifying her pores, turning molehills into mountains. Her eyebrows are unplucked pubic bushes above her ocular orbs. Her name is Galina.

Sitting at a dinner once, speaking with an eye doctor about graduation statistics, he leaned in close to me and says, “Do you know what they call the medical student who graduates very last in his class?” Stumped at his riddle, I shrugged, and he said, “Doctor,” and then chuckled to himself.

For anyone not versed in the legalities of this protocol, here’s how it shakes down. Galina acts as the gatekeeper. It is her job, as a doctor, to examine each patient and decide if they are in need of a medical marijuana license. If she approves of your disease, you pay her your $100, get an ACCEPTED stamp and walk out the door with a license. You then go to a second location (a dispensary) to purchase your medicinal herbal supplements. Scanning her desk, I can’t help but notice that there is no REJECTED stamp next to her envelope filled with money.

I sit down and she says, “What . . . eez rong?” I flop a manila envelope puking with doctor’s reports onto her desk and say, “Well . . . I have cancer . . . ” and she lights up like a Christmas tree. Someone with a sickness! A real sickness! Finally! I can use THIS! And she pulls the stethoscope – I’m not kidding – off her neck and, with a bit too much zest, pops out of her chair and signals me to a couch that looks like it belongs in Freud’s office.

I take a deep breath and think to myself, “This should be good.” I let it out and she taps a little hammer on my knee, testing my reflexes. I say, “Do the legs still work, doc?” and she says, “They seem to bee fine.”

She sits back behind her desk and says, “Doo yoo dreenk tap water?” and I say, “Yes,” and she says, “Thees . . . Thees ees the problem. There is sometheeng called alkaline in tap water. You must not dreenk it. You pay me three hundreed dollers and I will give you filter. Very good,” and I say, “I think the problem might be the cancer on my heart . . . and lungs . . . and the lymphoma . . . and the chemo I’m getting. I can’t eat,” and she says, “Yes, yes, but . . . thees will help. Three hundreed dollers. Plus one hundreed for medical lizence—four hundreed, very cheep. You be well in I say, one, maybe too munths.”

I nod and say, “I sort of don’t have a job right now so that seems a little steep,” and she says, “Two hundreed for Alkaline filter, one hundreed for mari-wona lizence. You cannot find this deel anywhere else,” and I say, “I believe that’s true. However, I am going to have to politely decline,” and she sighs and signs the license and hands it over to me. “Yoo come back, you change your mind.”